tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24793422018611495302017-09-08T16:44:31.306-07:00MOOCVILLELeonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-16100804498283300692014-03-07T18:58:00.000-08:002014-03-07T19:11:15.992-08:00The Diversity of MOOCs and the Dangers of Over-Generalization<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A lot of academic criticism of MOOCs derives from the fear that small, private online courses (SPOCs) open only to fee paying students, but based on MOOCs offered by “superstar” online professors, will replace local faculty, especially in lower tier institutions. Low-paid contingent faculty and teaching assistants (or worse, software programs and auto-graders) will then handle the heuristic teaching and grading, leaving fee paying students without expert human guidance. This is the "MOOCs will Destroy Higher Education as we Know It" argument.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is <a href="http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/the-mooc-dont-work-cause-the-vandals-took-the-handles/">prominent MOOC critic Jonathan Rees</a>:<o:p></o:p></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: inherit;">If you carry the hierarchical, every-student-for-themselves assumptions inherent in an xMOOC into the future you will never escape the reasons why so many caring educators oppose MOOCs in the first place. . . The problem with MOOCs isn’t the name. It’s not even the components of the acronym. The problem with MOOCs is that they’re being designed to create low-quality, hierarchical courses that can be championed by unscrupulous administrators to fire caring professors and leave unsuspecting students to fend entirely for themselves.</span></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;Rees appears to be arguing here against SPOCs, not MOOCs. But let’s take up that part of his argument directed nominally against MOOCs. Rees says: <o:p></o:p></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">Cosmetic changes will not solve (MOOC quality) problems. Only re-thinking the entire xMOOC experience from the ground up will have even the slightest chance of creating something worthwhile</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 200%;">.</span></span></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The initial bother here is Rees’s false choice between merely “cosmetic” changes vs. “rethinking MOOCs from the ground up”. Rees’s dualism neglects that middle ground of actual or potential positive developments within the existing x-MOOC framework. Rees would almost certainly know about these if he took a break from general critique to explore particular MOOCs. &nbsp;I’ll turn to this task below. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We can dismiss Rees’ unsupported claim about what MOOC designers intend. &nbsp;Have x-MOOCs been “designed to create low quality courses”. On the contrary, their designers seek to create high quality courses, as they understand them, with instruction better than they perceive to be today’s norm. Indeed Anant Agarwal has made it the highest priority of edX to use the huge data sets available in computerized courses with tens or hundreds of thousands of students to improve instruction and learning. MOOCs may nonetheless be low quality courses, of course, but that is another question and would have to be addressed on the basis of relevant criteria of value. &nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Have MOOCs been “designed to suit the needs of unscrupulous administrators?”&nbsp; This ids another unsupported claim.&nbsp;Agarwal, Koller, Ng and the other platform executive have had quite different aims – to scale up instruction and make quality higher education globally available. While this may also result in substitution of technology for labor in the university, it hardly follows that that was the intended result, and in any case is not a critique of MOOC instruction itself. It is no critique of a hammer that an imbecile can use it to bash in someone’s head. It might nonetheless be a very good hammer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Evaluating Particular MOOCs </b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So let’s consider the tasks of instruction in actual MOOCs.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Instruction in courses typically involves three inter-acting dimensions: didactic, discursive and heuristic. The didactic dimension conveys </span><i style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">knowledge</i><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> through lectures and textbook readings; the discursive facilitates </span><i style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">understanding</i><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">through discussion and critical feedback; the heuristic shapes </span><i style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">skills </i><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">through drill and practice. </span><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a geometry unit, for example, the didactic component may present basic concepts such as line, plane, axiom or proof; the discursive component may provide opportunities for discussion of e.g., proof strategies; the heuristic component may provide multiple opportunities to e.g., determine the area or perimeter of figures, to invent proofs, or to construct bi-sections of line segments.&nbsp; In a literature unit, the didactic may convey background knowledge on the author, genre or period, the discursive may provide opportunities for guided interpretive and critical discussions of a selected story, and the heuristic may provide opportunities to use strategies of analysis, e.g., to locate the protagonist, the central conflict, and the dénouement. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">G</span>ood instruction, whether in a classroom or a MOOC, provides for the development and integration of knowledge, understanding and skill. It aims to engage students into worthwhile activities and practices by&nbsp;melding “I know,” and “I understand,” with “I can do.” When we think in general terms about the evaluation of particular MOOCs, we want to ask how well these instructional dimensions can be handled through computer software.<span style="line-height: 200%;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Rees and other academic critics have condemned MOOCs as in effect using the best of 21</span><sup style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">st</sup><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">century technology to deliver the worst of 19</span><sup style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> century instruction. The lectures, they claim, consist of videotaped talking heads. The discussion boards are useless and riddled with spam and flame wars. The problem sets are repetitive, trivial, and exhausting. In short, MOOCs are poor tools for didactic, discursive, and heuristic dimensions of instruction.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But is this critique justified? I will consider each of the three dimensions of instruction, with specific examples from well-known MOOCs.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(1) <i>Didactic Instruction</i>. While MOOC critics may wish to portray live classroom instruction as akin to Mark Hopkins dialoguing with a few students on a log,&nbsp;the reality is generally quite different: faculty members serving up uninspiring lectures to halls full of disengaged students. If talking heads are the problem, academic critics are in no position to pin the blame on MOOCs. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MOOC presentations, however, are not in general talking heads. On the contrary, MOOC presentations are an entirely new form of pedagogical experience. The large data sets and the rich data trails of computerized instruction have enabled researchers to explore new questions, such as the optimum length for lecture segments, and the most effective way of articulating them with readings and problem sets. Research suggests that 6 minutes is optimal. MOOCs now typically break up brief lecture segments with problem sets and free-response questions. Lecture segments are supplemented with interviews, clips from panels at research conferences, interviews with other scholars, research presentations by graduate students, and on-site videos of knowledge use in ‘real-world’ settings. While a single instructor inevitably gives his course subject matters a personal twist, MOOCs offer unique opportunities for presenting multiple points of view. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><strong><span style="background-color: #fbfbfb; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/02/degree_of_freedom_project_earning_a_one_year_b_a_through_moocs.html">JonathanHaber, who constructed a complete college education in the humanities– in asingle year - </a>from MOOCs, and thus knows as much about actual MOOCs as any commentator, states: &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong><span style="background-color: #fbfbfb; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-weight: normal;">MOOCs are often criticized for just transferring a “sage on stage” pedagogy from the lectern to the computer screen, scaling up the worst aspects of oversized lecture classes. But as my year of MOOCs went on, I saw a new visual language developing, as single talking heads were supplemented (or replaced entirely) with conversations among colleagues (the visual style of one of my favorite courses: HarvardX’s &nbsp; "The Ancient Greek Hero")&nbsp;</span></strong><strong><span style="background-color: #fbfbfb; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-weight: normal;">interviews with experts, on-location shots, and even on-screen performances. Such creativity helped to make lectures one of the most engaging and, ironically, intimate components of massive online courses, while also raising the bar for all other forms of online learning (most of it far duller than your average MOOC).</span></strong></span></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At their best, MOOC presentations are as engaging as the best television news magazine programs. And this is not surprising, as the universities providing the best MOOCs are investing in cutting-edge production studios and hiring media professionals. The best MOOC presentations are more like segments of “60 minutes” than talking heads. &nbsp;We may question whether producing “edutainment” of this sort is the best use of scarce institutional funds, but that is another question entirely, and one that completely undercuts the “talking head” line of attack. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(2) <i>Discussion and Feedback</i>. Let’s acknowledge that the MOOC discussion boards are far from adequate substitutes for live discussion.&nbsp; Even some of the most supportive MOOC commentators have found them to have little value. The good news is that the discursive segments of many MOOCs have moved well beyond the discussion boards to live conversations in physical or virtual spaces. &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Coursera has sponsored “meet-ups” – where students in their MOOCs can get together for course discussion - in dozens of cities. Coursera has also teamed up with the U. S. State Department to run MOOC camps for college age students in many countries. The city of Boston has teamed up with edX to initiate Boston-x, a project providing Internet computers and meeting places for MOOC learners. Other cities have emulated Boston-x, dedicating space in libraries and other public buildings for MOOC study. These efforts parallel those of the Library 2.0 movement; librarians around the world are now re-thinking optimal uses for their brick and mortar building spaces in the age of web 2.0 technologies and digital books, and one answer is meeting spaces for online learners.&nbsp; C-MOOCs, and now many x-MOOCs well, make extensive use of video-conferencing – e.g., via Skype - to connect group members. MOOCs offering nothing more than discussion boards are simply behind the MOOC curve. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(3) <i>Heuristic Instruction</i>. Academic critics claim that the “can do” element of MOOCs is restricted to monitoring auto-or- peer graded problem sets. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Many actual MOOCs, however, have moved way beyond such mechanized problem sets, making project-based authentic learning central to the MOOC experience. Here are two examples: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">(1) At the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Professor </span><a href="http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Faculty-Research/Directory/Full-time/Michael-Lenox/"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Michael Lenox</span></a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> has offered several iterations of his “</span><a href="https://www.coursera.org/#course/strategy101" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Foundations of Business Strategy</span></a><span style="line-height: 200%;">” MOOC on the Coursera platform. Lenox uses “Coursolve,” a crowdsourcing software program, to connect his course with partner organizations where students work to solve real-life challenges. <a href="http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Media/Darden-News-Articles/2013/UVa-Darden-Strategy-MOOC-Offers-Student-Support-to-For-Profit-and-Nonprofit-Organizations/">He says:</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;">&nbsp;“Entrepreneurs don’t always have the resources to hire external support to address their needs, but we’ve seen firsthand that students are hungry for the chance to apply their knowledge to real-world problems,” Lenox says. &nbsp;“By collaborating with organizations, students can strengthen their skills development while potentially providing businesses and nonprofits with valuable insights.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the final course project, Lenox invited students to undertake complete a strategic analysis of one of the partner organizations. More than 400 students completed analyses in partnership with 100 different organizations, including established businesses, startups, resource-strapped nonprofits and social enterprises. 78% of those students ended up participating directly with senior managers in the strategic decision-making of their organizations. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/darden/2014/01/09/more-not-or-fear-and-loathing-the-world-of-moocs/">Reporting on the second iteration of the MOOC, Lenox added,</a> “</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">Hundreds of in-person study groups formed in over 50 countries. Students included young entrepreneurs and mature small business owners; non-profit organizers; a study group of Mongolia students&nbsp;led by a Peace Corps volunteer; a group of<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp; unemployed women in Ohio </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">looking to improve their job prospects; a group of students ijn Bolivia </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 200%;">led under a program from the U.S. State Department; and a group of Arab and Israeli students participating through the YaLa Young Leaders program building détente through education.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">(2) <a href="http://degreeoffreedom.org/interview-with-cathy-davidson/">Cathy Davidson of Duke University is now offering a Coursera MOOC on 'thehistory and future of higher education'.</a> Davidson has been a national leader in pushing the x-MOOC format in creative directions. Because her MOOC has many thousands of students, the student group can take on projects not possible within a classroom context. In one project, her students are collectively creating a rich, multi-media trans-national timeline of higher education since 1800. Each student is contributing reports on significant historical events in higher education in their geographic locations - countries, states, municipalities. The students are learning historical research methods and skills in reporting historical events. Many higher education institutions previously neglected by historians of education, including those long closed, are in this way being entered for the first time in an accessible historical record. The student group is now collaborating on editing and coordinating the information and producing the final online<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>product.<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Leonard/Desktop/old%20desktop/Len's%20articles/Diversity%20of%20MOOCs.doc#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span><span style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One does not need to love either of these particular skill development efforts to recognize that they go way beyond auto-graded problem sets. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My point in the above remarks has been to show that academic critics of MOOCs have relied on a stick-figure caricature. Real MOOCs, even x-MOOCs, are diverse, and many MOOC leaders have addressed the didactic, discursive and heuristic dimensions of instruction in creative ways. The best MOOCs replace the ‘sage on the stage’ stalking head with presentations employing a “new visual language” of instruction; they build in group experiences, whether physical or virtual, with opportunities for interpersonal student dialogue; they make project-based learning the centerpiece of the educational experience. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, not all MOOCs do this. Some do, some don’t. And that is precisely the point I am making. If we want to assess the pedagogical value of MOOCs, we will have to turn our attention to particular courses to see how they handle instructional tasks. The most important dimensions of instruction, the didactic, discursive and heuristic, provide useful pegs upon which to hang such particular evaluative judgments. &nbsp;</span></div><div><div id="ftn3"><br /></div><div id="ftn4"><h1 style="background: white; margin-top: 0in; mso-line-height-alt: 13.2pt; vertical-align: baseline;"></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br /></div></div><div id="ftn5"><br /><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br /></div></div></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-79034820578699963122014-02-11T13:01:00.000-08:002014-02-12T09:08:14.753-08:00University Course Credits for MOOC Certificates: One Likely Pathway How will MOOC-based learning aid learners in entering and performing in the workplace? <br /><br />We may imagine MOOC-based learning to serve as a qualification in two ways: let's call them the (1) certificate, (2) credit routes.<br /><br />On the first, MOOC aggregations of certificates themselves are offered as significant job qualifications on a par with, or as an accepted substitute for, college and university degrees. I discussed this option in my last post. On the second, the certificates will be accepted for college and university credit, and thus become (like conventional courses) components of degree pathways where degrees serve as qualifications.<br /><br /><b>Certificates as Qualifications</b><br /><br />The first route &nbsp;- the use of MOOC certificates as qualifications - has been explored with mixed results..<br /><br />In December 2012 <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Providers-of-Free-MOOCs-Now/136117/">Coursera announced the opening of its Career Services program, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.</a>&nbsp;Participating firms, which have included Yahoo and Twitter, contract with the MOOC provider for an undisclosed fee to get data on students' performance on Coursera's MOOCs. Both students and Coursera's participating University partners can opt out of the program. Udacity had already announced a similar program.<br /><br />In 2013 the MOOC provider <a href="http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2013/12/17/boston-companies-edx-drops-plans-for-job-placement-services/">edX experimented with its own job service</a>, attempting to place its top MOOC students in jobs with similar companies - the leading high-tech firms. Of the more than 800 top performers that edX placed before these firms, only three received interviews and not a single one was offered a job. Following this failed experiment, edX withdrew from the career services arena. <br /><br />As <a href="http://moocville.blogspot.com/2014/02/mooc-majors-alternative-route-to.html">I recently argued in this blog</a>, this step may have been premature and ill-founded:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333f6e; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">The top-tier firms get thousands of applicants from the best university programs in computer science and information systems for every opening. Why would they be interested in experimenting with MOOC learners when they can take their pick of numerous Stanford, MIT and Purdue grads, who have shown the persistence to earn four year degrees, rubbed shoulders with top professors, and networked with other top students who will soon enter the workforce and connect up with hundreds of other hot prospects?&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333f6e; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333f6e; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Meanwhile,&nbsp;&nbsp;new business start-ups in Silicon Valley, on Massachusetts Route 128, in New York's Silicon Alley and throughout the country hunger for talent. Most organizations will not be able to compete for the top grads of the top-tier university programs. Is it not possible that edX, which is hardly an expert in the employment agency business, simply directed their efforts at the wrong job market.</span></blockquote>&nbsp;New online job placement services appear - almost daily - to link individuals with skills and firms hungry for demonstrated capabilities. How effective MOOC certificates will prove to be as demonstrations of skill remains to be seen. <br /><br /><b>Certificates as Transfer Credits&nbsp;</b><br /><br />In this post I want to consider whether MOOC certificates are likely to enter into degree pathways - that is, whether colleges and universities are likely, anytime soon, to accept MOOC certificates as transferable credits in their degree pathways. <br /><br />It will be remembered that by the end of 2012 the American Council on Education, the body responsible for determining the credit-worthiness of college courses, had, <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/MOOCs-Take-a-Major-Step/135750/">as noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, begun to evaluate some MOOCs as credit-worthy</a>. The Chronicle quite rightly proclaimed this as a major step - it signaled that colleges and universities failing to recognize MOOC-based learning could not base their rejection on grounds of academic quality.<br /><br />But to date, few academic institutions have been willing to grant transfer credit for MOOC certificates. And it is not hard to see why! These organizations have become increasingly dependent on tuition dollars for their daily operations. They are naturally reluctant to accept MOOC-based credits into their degree pathways if in doing so they have to forego tuition revenues. If their degrees require, let us say, 120 credits, &nbsp;at an average cost per credit of perhaps $700, plus fees, then transferring in a MOOC in lieu of a four-credit course would cost almost $3,000. Accepting up to four such transfer courses would cost up to $12,000 per student. If a significant fraction of their students were able to avoid these tuition costs, the organization would be financially strained if not bankrupted.<br /><br />However, the combination of rising tuition and rising unemployment/underemployment for recent college grads, has radically decreased the private rate of return on the investment in college. The well-publicized trillion dollar student debt crisis has brought this economic fact to public awareness. Most families consider tuition costs as economic investments intended to increase future earnings. As the rate of return on this investment declines (or goes into minus territory) families are reconsidering the value of college education.<br /><br />According to a <a href="https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-New-Survey-Finds-Over-40-of-Universities-Face-Falling--PR_287436">Moody's Investment report on the credit-worthiness of colleges and universities</a> released in November 2013, 40% faced stagnant or declining tuition revenues.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Anemic tuition revenue growth has spread to a larger share of the higher education industry, infecting public universities for the first time in decades. At this pace, tuition-dependent colleges and universities will be challenged to make necessary investments in personnel, programs, and facilities to remain competitive over the longer term," said Karen Kedem, a Moody's senior analyst and author of the report.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Moody's key findings include net tuition revenue declines at a projected 28% of public and 19% of private universities, with net tuition revenue growth below inflation projected for 44% of public and 42% of private universities and total enrollment declines at nearly half of public and private universities. </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">In addition, federal budget negotiations, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and performance-based funding may result in further stress on colleges if student aid and loan programs are curtailed to any degree, given that a rising share of students are dependent on these funding sources, says Moody's.</span>&nbsp;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;</blockquote>While many colleges and universities will continue to demand that their matriculated students earn - and pay for - their credits internally, others will now be hungry for any and all tuition dollars they can get. Some, faced with declining enrollments, will welcome students offering MOOC certificates - like other life experiences - for credit. Others will see the transfer of MOOC credits, paradoxically, as a profit opportunity.<br /><br />Consider the recent decision by Ashford University to accept MOOC certificates for credit!<br /><br />Ashford University is a for-profit academic organization owned by Bridgepoint Education, with a campus in Clinton Iowa and a large and profitable on-line degree operation. <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-for-profit-university-will-accept-mooc-credits/49805">The university recently agreed, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, to accept certain ACE approved MOOCs from Coursera and Udacity, for transfer credit.</a><br /><br />Ashford University depends for its tuition revenues largely on students with federally guaranteed student loans.Relatively few of its students complete their degree programs. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_University">According to Wikipedia</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, "a<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">s for-profit colleges have come under increasing scrutiny, a&nbsp;</span><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Senate" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-decoration: none;" title="U.S. Senate"><span style="color: black;">U.S. Senate</span></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">&nbsp;report in 2011 listed Ashford's parent company, Bridgepoint, as having one of the highest withdrawal rates of any publicly traded school in the industry." <span style="font-family: inherit;">Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa has said of Ashford&nbsp;</span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">"I think this is a scam, an absolute scam."</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nonetheless, Ashford is on to something! <a href="http://www.ashford.edu/about/ashford_mission.htm">According to its website,</a> <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span><span style="line-height: 18px;">The mission of Ashford University&nbsp;is to provide accessible, affordable, innovative, high-quality learning opportunities and degree programs."</span><span style="line-height: 18px;">&nbsp;Let's first focus on "affordable". Ashford's website states prominently that students can transfer in up to 90 credits. That is a generous transfer policy. On the face of it, the policy implies that Ashford is willing to forego tuition revenues for these 90 credits. But consider that that leaves 30 or more credits in the degree pathway - credits for which Ashford can collect tuition revenues. That is very likely 30 credits worth of tuition that the university would not, without its generous transfer policy, otherwise hope to collect.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Turning to "accessible," more than 95% of Ashford's students are enrolled in its anywhere/anytime on-line degree programs consisting of high margin, readily scalable on-line courses. Students will be paying tuition for courses &nbsp;with low marginal costs per student. That generous transfer policy, with its embrace of MOOC certificates for credit, looks like a pretty good deal for the university.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">And it might also be an attractive deal for many students.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.news.nom.co/ashford-university-now-accepting-credits-7843313-news/">Ashford is aggressively defending its policy of accepting ACE-approved MOOC certificates for credit </a>as a boon to students, and its defense makes a lot of sense. "Requiring students to assume debt and repeat course content they have already mastered does not serve the individual student, the future employer, or the community," said Dr.&nbsp;</span><a class="intxt" href="http://www.news.nom.co/lori-williams/" style="font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="Lori Williams news"><span style="color: black;">Lori Williams</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, Ashford University provost. "Our job as an educational institution is to maximize learning and facilitate development for each student. In turn, students are more likely to complete their programs, have greater independence from debt, and ultimately get into the workforce more quickly."</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Ashford and its students will hardly be the only ones to find this deal appealing. Remember those "</span></span>total enrollment declines at nearly half of public and private universities." Why will those universities not follow in Ashford's footsteps and offer generous transfer policies, including transfer of MOOCs?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-51540789717564139302014-02-03T15:08:00.001-08:002014-02-12T09:05:43.207-08:00MOOC Majors: An Alternative Route to the Workforce <span style="font-family: inherit;">What is the MOOC Business Model?? That was one of the burning question about MOOCs in 2013. In 2014 we may learn that no one business model will prevail, but MOOC Platform firms will develop a number of promising and complementary revenue streams.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MOOC Sequences and Specializations</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of these revenue streams will be the Sequence Certificate or MOOC-Mini-Major. Last year several MOOC platforms introduced course sequences. The most heralded is the Georgia Tech Udacity masters degree in Computer Science, sponsored by AT&amp;T.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the MOOC firms also introduced several notable mini-courses-of-study that did not carry university credit or connect to a degree pathway. One notable example is the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-13/wharton-puts-first-year-mba-courses-online-for-free">sequence of foundation MBA courses from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School</a>, announced by Wharton and Coursera last September. These courses, like others from Coursera, were offered free of charge. In January 2014 Laurie Pickard, a master's degree graduate of my university, Temple, <a href="http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/14/an-mba-for-less-than-1000/">was featured in Fortune magazine</a> for patching together an entire MBA-type program from such MOOCs.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">In January 2014 Coursera announced their Specializations Certificate Programs. These programs package a number of distinct MOOCs - from 3 to 9 - offered by the same institution, plus a final capstone project and exam. Students pay for each course in the sequence, complete the capstone project and exam, and earn a certificate not just for each course but for the entire sequence. The sequences are thus MOOC-based near equivalents of college majors, at least in the sense that the courses are designed by a single institution's faculty to fit together in a sequence and to generate capabilities currently demanded in the economy.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Two good examples of the new Specializations programs are the<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-md-and-johns-hopkins-offer-specialized-sequences-of-online-courses-via-coursera/2014/01/24/afb6e640-8512-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html">&nbsp;</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.5px;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-md-and-johns-hopkins-offer-specialized-sequences-of-online-courses-via-coursera/2014/01/24/afb6e640-8512-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html">four-course sequence in cybersecurity, a hot field with a bright future, offered by the University of Maryland </a>with a certificate available to those who pass all four, complete a capstone project and pay $245 and the&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.5px;">sequence of nine MOOCs in data science offered by Johns Hopkins, with certificates available to those who pass all nine, complete a capstone project and pay $490.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.5px;">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MOOC Mini-Majors</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is not difficult to imagine students in the near future offering up&nbsp;</span>two, three or four of these Specialization certificates in lieu of a university "major". But obstacles remain.<br /><br />EdX recently experimented with matching more than 800 top-performing MOOC learners with top-tier technology companies. <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/edx-drops-plans-to-connect-mooc-students-with-employers/48987">The results, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education,</a> were not merely disappointing but disastrous. Despite the sponsorship of edX, only three received interviews, and not one was hired. Subsequently edX has withdrawn from the 'employment agency' business.<br /><br />That step may have been premature. The top-tier firms get thousands of applicants from the best university programs in computer science and information systems for every opening. Why would they be interested in experimenting with MOOC learners when they can take their pick of numerous Stanford, MIT and Purdue grads, who have shown the persistence to earn four year degrees, rubbed shoulders with top professors, and networked with other top students who will soon enter the workforce and connect up with hundreds of other hot prospects? <br /><br />Meanwhile,&nbsp;&nbsp;new business start-ups in Silicon Valley, on Massachusetts Route 128, in New York's Silicon Alley and throughout the country hunger for talent. Most organizations will not be able to compete for the top grads of the top-tier university programs. Is it not possible that edX, which is hardly an expert in the employment agency business, simply directed their efforts at the wrong job market.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">One is reminded of <a href="http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Media/Darden-News-Articles/2013/UVa-Darden-Strategy-MOOC-Enables-Students-to-Help-Entrepreneurs-and-Nonprofits/">Prof. Michael Lenox's Coursera MOOC on Business Strategy offered in February and March 2013.</a>&nbsp;Lenox, a Professor at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, used crowdsourcing techniques to locate business firms and non-profit organizations willing to involve his MOOC students in their strategic planning. As Lenox said at the time:</span><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;">"The concept can be applied in any number of domains, Imagine a course on graphic design where students prepare solutions for real nonprofits or a computer program course where students develop code for small startups with limited budgets. The potential is enormous."</span></blockquote><div><br />As it turned out, the potential <i>was</i> enormous - &nbsp;more than 100 small firms and non-profits participated in Lenox's MOOC, and close to 80% of the active student participants contributed to these organizations' strategic planning.<br /><br />Now imagine a large scale effort by one of the big MOOC Platform firms to source similar organizations to provide short-term internships or apprenticeships for top performing MOOC students who have earned one or more Specialization Certificates? &nbsp; My guess is that, unlike the failed edX effort with Google, Intuit, Yahoo, and other top tier firms, a crowdsourced effort to connect top MOOC learners and hungry organizations would place many learners with MOOC majors in the workforce.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />In my next post I will consider the new promise of MOOCs in providing near equivalents of course credit that some universities, faced with declining enrollment and loss of tuition dollars, can accept as transfer credit to forge efficient and affordable 'mixed-mode' degree pathways.&nbsp;</div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-42033475482850241992014-01-31T13:57:00.003-08:002014-02-01T16:23:35.404-08:00 The Big 2014 MOOC Re-Boot<br /> <span style="font-family: inherit;">The big MOOCPlatforms are undergoing a large scale re-boot at the beginning of this new year. If 2012 was "the year of the MOOC" and 2013 the "Year of the Deflation of MOOC Hype," then 2014 may well be the "Year of MOOC's Second Chance." Here I focus on new efforts at Udacity and Coursera that are designed both to improve the learning experience and generate revenues.</span> <br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Udacity</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Udacity, which performed its famous "pivot" in mid 2013, and labeled its first efforts a "a lousy product" turned to revenues from corporate training. Since that time, Sebastian Thrun has continued to offer Udacity MOOCs free to the general public, but has emphasized the need - and availability for a price - of auxiliary services including mentoring and tutoring. <a href="https://www.udacity.com/">The new, re-booted Udacity website </a>puts these coaching services front and center:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Learning is a collaborative process, and we're here to provide you with guidance every step of the way. We'll help you select the right class, navigate challenging content, and improve your projects and code.</span></blockquote><br /><div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; line-height: 14px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div>Given the major emphasis on mentoring and tutoring in my account of online learning in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Education-2-0-LearningWeb-Revolution-Transformation/dp/1612050360">Education 2.0, </a>this is hardly a surprise. Most learners, at least those with little prior academic experience and success, and lacking well developed self-directed learning habits, are unable to get much value from MOOC-based learning unless aided by mentors and tutors. <br /><br />The mentors help them focus down on why they are learning, and what they need to be learning to move forward with their lives and achieve their aims - and even how to formulate some basic life goals. <br /><br />The tutors then help them focus down own on how to learn, on how to overcome misunderstandings, on how to motivate themselves to get through those course segments when the learning curve steepens - in addition to how to solve this or that problem or remember how to define this or that concept. <br /><br />Both are necessary for most learners - not just those from disadvantaged communities. Kids who take to academic work and thrive without some of this hand holding are out-liers. It will be very interesting to see how the <a href="https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/preparing-for-uni">new MOOC on "Preparing for Uni" on the FutureLearn" platform</a> will fare. Can we bootstrap MOOC-based Learning through MOOC-Based Learning? Or will we require some personal interventions with real humans? <br /><br />A question for another post: Can MOOC platforms - or at least the non-profit ones - figure out a way of providing personal mentoring and coaching through some combination of crowd-sourcing and what <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Creativity-Generosity-Connected/dp/B004KAB2VW">Clay Shirky calls the Cognitive Surplus</a>. If Yahoo Answers can elicit dozens of answers to each of thousands of questions daily, and Wikipedia can elicit encyclopedia articles, edits and additions on every conceivable topic, and open source enterprises can call out the collective talent of software engineers, then why can't either the MOOC Platforms or some auxiliary enterprise (like all those wonderful add-ons to Twitter) figure out how to source online (or even offline) mentoring and tutoring for MOOC learners? <br /><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Coursera</span><br /><div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; line-height: 14px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; line-height: 14px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div>Coursera's new front-line product is its Specializations Program. The Platform organizes course sequences which collectively build a skill with current workplace demand. The <a href="https://www.coursera.org/specializations">Specializations Page </a> showcases ten of these programs. Coursera and edX - and other MOOC platforms, have already offered course sequences - most dramatically, entire foundation year MBA course sequences from top business schools like Wharton. What is new with the Specializations is (1) the specific skill- with-workplace-demand promise, and (2) the price tag per each course in the sequence. Specialization courses can still be taken for free, but only those enrolled in the signature verification tracks can complete the final projects and get the certificate for the Specialization. <br /><br />So for now, Coursera, like Udacity, continues to offer its MOOCs in a cost-free version, but pins its hopes for revenue generation on add-ons. <br /><br />Like all disruptive technologies, MOOCs start with one set of core images and expectations forged by founders, and gravitate to other images and expectations in the inevitable back and forth of 'social construction'. It took the telephone a few decades to become what we have long since been familiar with. Some of the early adopters thought it would be a device for listening to classical music! The MOOCs will settle in, and as always, public uses and private ventures and their revenue streams will be the key determinate of what they ultimately become for us.</div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-16439409813761034362014-01-18T11:32:00.001-08:002014-02-01T16:03:45.082-08:00Can MOOCs Reduce the Cost of College?<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://mooctalk.org/2013/12/31/maththink-mooc-v4-part-8/#comment-3029">Professor Keith Devlin has recently argued on his MOOCtalk blog </a>that MOOCs will not stem the rising costs of college education. MOOCs are proving useful for continuing education, but they simply cannot replace the experiences packaged into a first class college education, and we will need such high powered college education to prepare those who will fuel economic growth. Thus we have to be prepared to bear rising costs for college, as we previously had to bear the costs of gasoline, hiways, and insurance to live in auto-industrial society.</span><br /><br />Devlin's basic idea, that the cost of a college education will continue to rise, is unsupported, and his analogy with the auto-industrial era leaves much to be desired. Much about the cost of college will depend on how we redesign our educational provisions - including how MOOCs enter into the equation - and what will count as a "college education" or even a "first class college education".<br /><br />That said, the rising cost of this "first class college education" raises questions that Keith does not address here. The first is, how will "society" pay for the rising cost of college, when the current cost is already ringing alarm bells? The second is, how many people will have access to college on Devlin's assumptions?<br /><br />One current problem is the eradication of many previously "college level" jobs by outsourcing and technology. Fewer jobs + rising cost will both contribute to a declining rate of return on private investment on a college education.<br /><br />Tuition dollars, however, now fund an increasing share of college education. The declining rate of private return implies that fewer people (at least those with an iota of economic rationality) will make the investment, driving down the flow of tuition dollars. Without these, how will colleges get funded?<br /><br />So this leaves the question: what fragment of the young adult population should go to college?<br /><br />With the declining private economic benefit, we have to ask about the public benefit of a college educated population. If there is a social benefit in an educated population beyond the economic growth provided by an educated workforce, then this cost should be borne by public investment, not private tuition fees. I don't see anyone arguing for a free or highly subsidized higher education anymore, because the emerging workforce no longer needs many of what came to be regarded as "college level" skills. The social benefit that most college professors assure us of appears invisible to policy makers and the masses of tax-conscious citizens.<br /><br />If our economic policy and occupational arrangements emerge in such a way as to richly reward that declining number of people possessing college-level skills the economy really needs, then those few who attain those skill levels will be paid back with interest for their investment in education, and should pay the requisite private tuitions. But then what happens to those who will be excluded on that basis?<br /><br />The most obvious answer is that we should (1) imagine new educational provisions for those priced out of college and unable to gain from college level skills in the emerging economy; and (2) ask those who eventually share directly in the wealth created by economic growth to contribute, through higher taxes, for expanded social insurance - and perhaps a social minimum of support - for those facing the risks of work in the contingent labor force: low wages, lack of job security and benefits and possible lifelong unemployment. . <br /><div><br /></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-22083040099062063332014-01-07T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-07T18:32:05.938-08:00THE NEW BLACK MOUNTAIN - AN ALL MOOC COLLEGE?<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1nDXBRhh9z0/Usri9MU48zI/AAAAAAAABM0/WTEX-Qct_98/s1600/Black-mountain-crest-nc1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1nDXBRhh9z0/Usri9MU48zI/AAAAAAAABM0/WTEX-Qct_98/s1600/Black-mountain-crest-nc1.jpg" height="146" width="200" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116014/black-mountain-sole-mooc-campus-online-learners-has-rough-start">Over at the New Republic, Nora Caplan-Bricker reviews the progress of the Black Mountain Self-Organized learning Environment (SOLE)</a>, which has set out to use MOOCs in place of live instruction.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">FOR THOSE THINKING ABOUT MAKING MOOCS THE BACKBONE OF A LIVE-IN COLLEGE, THIS ARTICLE IS MUST READING.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Oddly, the SOLE (for self-organized learning environment) is housed at buildings formerly serving the famous<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mountain_College"> Black Mountain College</a>. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mountain-An-Exploration-Community/dp/0810125943/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1389028239&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=duberman+black+mountain">Martin Duberman has written a revealing history of the College</a>: </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;">Black Mountain An Exploration in Community.&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">But th</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">e similarities end there. Black Mountain was organized by some of the most important artists and poets and thinkers of its time. This reincarnation of Black Mountain is the day dream of two ill-prepared dreamers. Black Mountain attracted the most creative intellectual and artistic leaders in the country and abroad - this non-college has so far attracted a motley crew of drifters. Most important, despite the idea of the MOOC background, it appears that nobody actually takes MOOCs - they are too demanding. Instead, navel gazing appears to be the main pre-occupation of most students in the arts and humanities, while the more entrepreneurial students spend all day working on their start ups.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">As Caplan-Bricker sums up the fuzzy logic of the organization,&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Black Mountain attracts a hodgepodge of Merrell-wearing commune veterans and aspiring Silicon Valley transplants. The language of the Blueprints borrowed from both: a trip to the bathroom was a “bio break,” but “to execute on” was a ubiquitous compound verb. The classroom walls were lined with scribbled brainstorming webs and statements of purpose on easel sheets. “THE FOUR PRINCIPLES,” said one, in blue and green marker. “Whoever comes are the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it’s over, it’s over.”&nbsp;</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the bottom, it proclaimed “THE ONE LAW,” which is “The Law of Two Feet”: The school’s “SOLEmates”—its term for students—can attend what they choose and leave when they please. </span></blockquote><div class="ad-break ad-layer" style="border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: 'Publico Text'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Anyone reading this failed experiment as a test case for MOOCs hasn't paid the first scrap of attention to it.</span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-83604910469020957992014-01-05T15:24:00.001-08:002014-01-05T15:31:00.037-08:00HOW TO IMPROVE VIRTUAL SCHOOLS <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JyoOjnrkwgs/UsnpYUGJIbI/AAAAAAAABMk/pzQN92FyA0A/s1600/empty+classroom+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JyoOjnrkwgs/UsnpYUGJIbI/AAAAAAAABMk/pzQN92FyA0A/s1600/empty+classroom+.jpg" height="132" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Today I want to shift my attention from MOOCs to another promising form of online education, virtual schools. I have some personal experience with these, as my son is a graduate of one - PA Cyber in Pennsylvania.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://elearningindustry.com/3-tips-to-improve-virtual-schools">Houston C. Tucker, over at E-learning Industry</a>, proposes three ways to improve virtual schools: treat the students as honored guests, stay flexible, and train your virtual teachers to deliver every instructional message with as much love and c</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">are as they can muster.&nbsp;These ideas are sound, and I wanted to think about them in relation to the virtual school I knew at first hand.</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />So let me say up front I am a big supporter of virtual schools. They fit the special needs of come young people and their families. As a pluralist, I oppose all one-size-fits-all policies. (Of course this does not mean I support just any virtual schools - only the good ones).<br /><br />Some may counter idea by saying that that young people are NOT guests in school but instead are there - by force if necessary - to be subjected to some important lessons - whether algebra or democratic values or whatever.<br /><br />There is no credible evidence that high school students cannot learn algebra on line as well as in a conventional classroom. Further, no one can learn democratic values in a compulsory, prison-like institution. The whole institutional message is passivity, docility, obedience. One reason I like virtual schools is because in the home environment parents can zero out a lot of those messages.<br /><br />My son Sjoma attended PA Cyber. It did a great job on #1 - it treated its students with great respect, providing lots of course choices and formal academic mentoring. But is t also was demanding. When he fell behind his mentor called him - and then us - and demanded that Sjoma show up at the learning center for faced-to-face academic counseling. Between his mentor and his counselor he got back on track.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">It also had an excellent college-study program - students could begin to take in-person or online college courses as soon as they were ready. So it got an A+ on flexibility -- until the commonwealth of PA came in and dictated that virtual schools, unlike their conventional counterparts - could not offer college study programs. So in this case PA got a flat F.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Unlike many virtual schools, PA Cyber offered no courses of their own - all were outsourced to educational provider firms. Some teachers were better than others, but I doubt that all content messages were delivered with maximum love. On the other hand, none of the teachers was cruel or incompetent - market logic pretty much took care of that - for better or worse - by provider firms hiring their teachers on a contingent basis and eliminating those low on the star system.<br /><br />And of course there are many problems about that, but so far as i could tell they did not include low quality teaching or teachers not well-adjusted to the online context.</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The obvious question is whether the states could provide virtual colleges - let's say PA-Cyber College in Pennsylvania - for free or at a very low cost, using MOOCs as the backbone? &nbsp;This would be one concrete step to ending the student debt problem.</span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-19853916721649403602013-12-03T04:00:00.000-08:002013-12-03T04:00:06.823-08:00"MOOC+": An ideal plan for MOOCville<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">After almost a year of reading about MOOCs I am starting to formulate an idea of how MOOCs should develop and become entrenched as institutions in society. I am calling my plan MOOC+.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Some of the problems that need to be addressed:&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(1) Preparation. 'average' students do not have the best academic orientations or tradeskills to adjust well to online learning. I have been discussing this problem with Laura Joplin (who happens to be Janis's sister) - she has been working on a fix that involves a F2F intervention of perhaps a semester in length. Call this what you want;, "An Introduction to Academic Life, " or Practical Epistemology," or "Academic Tradeskill 101," the idea is to assist learners to figure out what they want out of further education, what they can expect from it, and how it all works.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(2) Cost. Tuitions have risen exponentially and students are paying for all of the wet dreams of administrators and donors for more, and more expensive, facilities, and thus taking on crippling debt. Meanwhile the ACE is certifying the academic quality of many MOOCs. This process needs to be accelerated. We need to identify a core of about 500 free courses or more that can pass muster as free academic course equivalents.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(3) Accreditation. No mainstream university will offer all MOOC undergrad degrees along with their traditional programs, as this would introduce channel conflict (the cheaper channel will cut into the revenues from the more expensive one). But states, or consortia of states, will no doubt go this route, and seek (and obtain) alternative certifications, just as have University of Phoenix, Western Governors University, and others.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(4) Mentoring and Tutoring. Students will need personalized assistance with learning, and with forging life plans and adjusting their educational programs to their occupational aims. They will also need personalized tutoring in completing MOOCs, as most MOOCs seem to have units or specific learning points along the way where the learning curve steepens and leaves many behind. The MOOC+ model will charge a small fee (perhaps $200 per course, paid by the learner or through a state subsidy) to cover the administrative and personnel costs associated with mentoring, tutoring, and associated book-keeping.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(5) Facilities. Boston has partnered with edX to build out 'BostonX' - an institution to support MOOC learning. The city will provide some physical infrastructure - places to use computers, get help, meet and discuss with other MOOC learners. This is like an extension of the contemporary library, with its computers, reference materials, research librarians and meeting rooms.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">(6) Qualifications. Coursera is already operating an employment agency linking MOOC completers to work opportunities. Firms pay Coursera for access to the successful MOOC students. An association of firms in Silicon Valley is already working out arrangements to accept aggregations of MOOCs in lieu of diplomas in hiring and promotion. These efforts need to be somewhat more institutionalized, so that each firm doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. I would like to see the idea of diploma equivalence worked into state law, along with mandates preventing firms from discriminating against MOOC equivalency 'diplomas'. If states build out MOOC+ agencies, they can also facilitate the school to work transitions of MOOC 'graduates' through such legal and institutional means. &nbsp;</span><br /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Such programs would not offer everything a college education offers, but would be very affordable, and more than competitive in forging links to workplaces- which is what most students and families want. And with the rapid pace of MOOC innovation, compared to the snail's pace of university innovation, MOOC+&nbsp;programs could be far more flexible and adaptive than traditional colleges and universities in adjusting learning opportunities to workplace needs.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">So in brief, MOOC+ =&nbsp;&nbsp;An in-person preparatory program + ACE approved MOOCs + Mentoring and Tutoring + Credit for MOOCs + CityX dedicated meeting and studying spaces + MOOC to Work programs + Recognition of MOOC-based diploma equivalency.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">&nbsp;</span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-59996557903846961342013-11-29T04:00:00.000-08:002013-12-02T17:57:57.388-08:00DO MOOCS EXPLOIT STUDENTS BY COLLECTING DATA FROM THEM? <span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">At NeoAcademic,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Professor Richard Landers&nbsp;</span><a href="http://neoacademic.com/2013/11/13/when-a-mooc-exploits-its-learners-a-coursera-case-study/" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">&nbsp;complains </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">that MOOCs exploit students by using them to generate data (something that is standard in 'real courses' but also regulated by informed consent).</span><br /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">I find the word "exploit" in this context offensive. Suppose the MOOC leaders say upfront: "We will be asking you some questions and hope to use the data in ou</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">r research studying XYZ. We hope you will also learn from these exercises. Mooc participants will also collaborate on creating an online archive of games." And then ask you to check a box before participating in the MOOC. I think this is sufficient informed consent.<br /><br />The providers are offering something and I see no reason why they can't ask for something. No one (at least for now) has to take any MOOC. The university also offers something, and asks anywhere from $500 to $2500 per CREDIT. Most employers now mandate possession of a college degree even for jobs that do not require the capabilities acquired through college (and which can be gained in other ways). And in the U.S. the total student college debt exceeds $1 TRILLION. If we are looking around for something exploitive, why not start with university education.</span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-18990675216474997592013-11-26T13:34:00.000-08:002013-11-26T13:37:44.789-08:00MOOCs and the Manufactured Crisis of Higher Education<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Over at <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/10/28/moocs_corporate_welfare_for_credit/">Slate, authors Christian and Calvin Exoo</a> argue that MOOCs represent the entry of large, dominant corporations into the Education space. They paint&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Coursera, edX and Udacity as emerging giants - controlling education as Big Pharma and Big Oil now dominate their industries.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">The big MOOC firms claim to be responding to the problem of restricted access to higher education. But, the authors claim, the U.S. has no such problem - the MOOC firms are 'manufacturing' the problem through their press releases to blind us from reality. A huge percentage of kids, the authors counter, gain access to some form of higher education. The real problem, the authors state, lies in retention: kids drop out because they are unprepared for college and can't aff</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;">ord tuition. The solution they propose is adding lots of remedial services and extra&nbsp;</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">financial aid around the margins for disadvantaged kids. These two steps could </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">get a huge percentage through college. MOOCs provide neither financial aid or remediation, and hence offer nothing for the "real" crisis.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Leaving beside edX's non-profit status and its decisive move to open source, and<a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb"> Udacity's apparent exit from the education market to concentrate on corporate training</a> - which leaves only Coursera still standing as a large corporate entity in the MOOC education space, this analysis still seems wrong-headed. &nbsp;</span></span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My response is that it is the authors, and not the MOOC firms, who are manufacturing a crisis.</span></span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The real crisis is not that too many kids fail to complete college - but rather that too many kids get forced into college because no other pathways to dignified work exist in our society. If we didn't make college a more or less compulsory job qualification - even for jobs that make no use of college related knowledge or skills - we wouldn't need to push these kids through college in the first place. Then they would not need all of these extra-ordinary measures to graduate.<br /><br />Suppose we do get these kids through college. They will still be facing both a poor and contracting job market - especially for that fragment that needed even more remedial services and extra tuition help. And those kids would also still be burdened with huge debts, which will cripple them financially for life. These are the real crises, and the authors' solutions completely ignore them.<br /><br />The real challenge is to envision and implement alternative pathways to the workplace. The promise of MOOCs lies in their providing one element in the educational mix aligned with these new pathways. The authors propose to push these kids through a college education. But the kids and their families only seek college education because it has been made into a compulsory qualification. The kids and their families, however, are being sold a bill of goods. There will be no college-level jobs waiting at the end of the compulsory college education. And the kids will end up deep in debt.<br /><br />The alternative I envision gets these young people more rapidly into workplaces - as apprentices, interns, or small entrepreneurs - and provides the educational backup they need to progress in their work paths without taking on debt. In such arrangements, MOOCs will find one of their most important educational roles</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.&nbsp;</span></span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-9334665702695366902013-11-17T11:47:00.003-08:002013-11-17T11:49:56.491-08:00CAN MOOCS DEMOCRATISE HIGHER EDUCATION? <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ilC4GRKTgIs/UokdOtijhlI/AAAAAAAAAUM/orzOIoSKckA/s1600/Democracy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="46" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ilC4GRKTgIs/UokdOtijhlI/AAAAAAAAAUM/orzOIoSKckA/s200/Democracy.png" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">CAN MOOCS DEMOCRATISE HIGHER EDUCATION?&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://pbsloep.blogspot.com/2013/11/moocs-democratising-education-i-am-not.html">Peter Sloep says "No"</a>. I find his argument unconvincing.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Sloep argues that third world higher education will shift from their own native universities to MOOC Learning Centers conveying contents from the West, shaped by corporate, rather than ind</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">ividual or public, interests.<br /><br />There are two problems with his argument.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">First, there is no evidence provided that universities in developing countries are closing down - the key to Sloep's argument. Instead, many international students are supplementing their native educations with MOOCs, while many others are using them for continuing professional education - and some without access to existing agencies of higher education are using them to educate themselves. So the leading premise of Sloep's case seems false.<br /><br />Second, Sloep ignores the corporate capture of conventional institutions of higher education. There is a huge literature on the topic <a href="http://www.aft.org/pdfs/highered/academic/june04/Rhoades.qxp.pdf">Sheila Slaughter introduced a couple of decades ago under the rubric "Academic Capitalism". </a>The idea that universities, even state operated universities, are run in the interests of their individual students, the public interest or the interests of the liberal state, has been entirely debunked with data across many countries. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Academic-Capitalism-Politics-Entrepreneurial-University/dp/0801855497/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1384715509&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=slaughter+leslie+academic+capitalism">Slaughter and her co-workers have shown </a>that on many dimensions of education, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Academic-Capitalism-New-Economy-Education/dp/0801892333/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1384715566&amp;sr=8-1-spell&amp;keywords=slaughterrhoads+academic+capitalism">across all classes of participants in universities</a>, corporate interests now dominate and universities as organizations are mimicking corporate behaviors.&nbsp;The Idea that MOOCs represent a shift from the professional and scholar- run agencies to those of corporations serving their own narrow interests is as a result a non-starter.<br /><br />Besides, new MOOC platforms such as MOOC.org provide all individuals and groups with the technical means to mount any courses they wish. <a href="http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses">Aggregation sites like open culture </a>&nbsp;are making MOOCs on all platforms readily accessible globally. No one platform - indeed, no one MOOC format - will dominate.</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">MOOCs as an institutional innovation are in the earliest stages of their development, and no one can predict how they will play out - there are simply too many causal forces at work. The democratising force of MOOCs is yet unknown.&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">But one possibility is the exact reverse of what Sloep predicts - groups of scholars joining to provide a 'counter-education' to the one shaped in corporate interests - that is, an education shaped by communities of scholars and not by universities operating in the academic capitalist mode. The costs of entry will be low, and certifying agencies like ACE will lose all credibility if they discriminate against these MOOCs in favor of the corporate-dominated ones.</span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-12143999399057523952013-11-14T12:34:00.003-08:002013-11-14T12:48:53.767-08:00Student Recruitment as MOOC Business Model <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WsK0PUth0lo/UoU2voALFTI/AAAAAAAAAT4/uTzGe7B1TUY/s1600/moneyman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WsK0PUth0lo/UoU2voALFTI/AAAAAAAAAT4/uTzGe7B1TUY/s200/moneyman.jpg" width="155" /></a>The University of London has recently <a href="http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1350857/university-london-expand-its-selection-free-online">declared its MOOC business model a success</a>. Is it really?<br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">The University has offered 4 MOOCs to an unlimited number of students, and attracted 210,000 people from 160 countries.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Barney Grainger, acadaemic project manager for University of London International Programmes, says: ". . . &nbsp;we have received, at this point, 45 expressions of interest in our degree courses from students who have taken one of our MOOCs."</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He adds: "The fact that there is a conversion from MOOC learning to seeking full degrees would indicate that our outlay on these MOOCs has, in fact, been justified. Our learning journey has commenced, and the MOOC business model can work," Grainger says.</span></span><br /><br />&nbsp;Let's see: 45 out of 210,000 = .000214, or 2.1 per 10,000. And we are only talking about leads, not conversions. No magazine subscription or mail order catalog campaign would call that rate of response a success.<br /><br />But what is a success in MOOCville?<br /><br />Let's first consider the Georgia Tech model, where the all MOOC masters degree program in computer science costs $7,000. 45 actual students (not 'requests for information) would generate $315,000 in revenues. Not much, but the marginal cost of the next student = $0. So much depends on scale-up.<br /><br />Suppose instead these prospective students enroll in costly F2F on-campus programs with fixed costs already sunk, thus adding little marginal cost per student. According to<a href="http://www.degreeinfo.com/general-distance-learning-discussions/34720-average-cost-masters-degree.html"> one source</a>, the average cost of a masters degree ranges from $28K to $38K. Taking the mean, those 45 students would now generate almost $1.5M.<br /><br />What about the costs?<br /><br />The cost of funding a dedicated University MOOC production studio has run upwards of $1M. And schools are now hiring MOOC production managers. The<a href="http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/former-edx-program-manager-to-help-direct-bu-online-education/"> new one at Boston University</a>, Romy Ruukel, came direct from edX after a decade at Harvard's Project Zero, so she didn't come cheap. <br /><br />But some schools have made do with their own personnel and available production equipment valued at less than $2,500.<br /><br />And then, there are the dedicated course production costs to consider. Talking head MOOCs aren't going to generate many requests for information about degree opportunities. Production values will have to be high - and that is costly.<br /><br />Whatever the costs, once invested by an institution its MOOC production can be scaled up. A studio and production team that produces 4 MOOCs could produce 40. Universities carefully selecting their 'flagship' programs and adding a lot of sizzle could improve the rate of response. (A successful consulting practice could be built on the mail-order marketing model to assist universities in managing their MOOC-based marketing campaigns).<br /><br />We will need a lot more information on rates of response and conversions, and total revenue from conversions, before we can assess student recruitment as a MOOC business model. But as the MOOC space expands and competition heats up, such information will probably be very closely held.<br /><div><br /></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-46246002670504510612013-11-05T15:48:00.000-08:002013-11-05T15:55:31.516-08:00Opposition and Social Structure in Moocville<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">Over at Playable, <a href="http://deangroom.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/the-monty-python-mooc/">DSKMAG comments on the oppositions constituting the social structure in MOOCville.</a> Here is the account, lightly paraphrased. &nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">In the first generation of ed tech, people were represented but could not participate. The structure was built on polar oppositions - expert/audience, teacher/student, etc. But the new media world of web 2.0 challenges these oppositions. All of us can represent ourselves and participate in our own self-representations. We are no longer mere consumers of meanings but also their producers.</span></span><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBBMmkUSm50/UnmDSBc_QJI/AAAAAAAAATQ/YmPtRC6sCyw/s1600/From_hierarchy_to_decentralisation.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBBMmkUSm50/UnmDSBc_QJI/AAAAAAAAATQ/YmPtRC6sCyw/s320/From_hierarchy_to_decentralisation.png" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">We can compare two emerging Internet structures. One is the structure of web celebrities and their audiences, the other is the structure of roughly equal distributed knowers and meaning producers.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">Sir Ken Robinson is a paradigm of the first. He is a media star, and his TED talk is a paradigm of the kind of media object which the rest of us can stand back and marvel at. We participate in his celebrity by absorbing and 'getting' his insights. Compare this with William Shatner or Kurt Sutter who engage with us one-to-one on Twitter. They understand the new power of media, while Robinson understands merely how to use media to grab power for himself.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">By emerging from the crowd, the Robinson types lose contact with web users and fail to pick up on the new cutting edge ideas constantly emerging out there. They come to believe too much in their own social authority, and over-rate their correctness. To put this another way, they come to think that knowledge resides in them, not in the network.</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">I am reminded here of a wonderful line from Picasso. In his famous interview with Christian Zervos, Picasso said "I never buy a picture from myself". He meant that he wasn't all that impressed with himself and his past processes or objects - rather he was tuned in to the world and the art world, and always moving on to the next thing.</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">The Ken Robinson's by contrast are perpetually buying pictures from themselves.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">xMOOCs, the article contends, constitute the entire human population as 'audiences' - as 'students' being served up "habituated content" by venture capitalists, Scientists, elite universities, and intellectuals. The students, once habituated to the new commodified knowledge forms, are then to be converted into potential paying customers of the next levels of 'education,' as e.g. students in Georgia Tech's Masters degree program, or the <a href="http://moocville.blogspot.com/2013/10/free-university-credits-given-away-in.html">business schools of Temple or the University of Cincinnati.</a> And the students are expected to be grateful - they are getting a 'second chance' - or a 'world class elite university course' as a philanthropic <i>gift</i>.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">xMOOCs, in short, perpetuate the cultural control of experts - those whose status is most threatened by the open access, distributed knowledge potential of web 2.0 and what I call <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Education-2-0-LearningWeb-Revolution-Transformation/dp/1612050360/ref=tmm_pap_title_0">'education 2.0.'</a> They convey the message that a 'real educational experience' - even for those liberating themselves from the hegemonic structures of schooling - is one provided by an institution - and ultimately at significant cost to the 'student'.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">In this model learners and knowers remain 'students' who control neither the processes or outcomes of their own learning. xMOOCs thus reproduce the structure of oppositions - expert/ novice and teacher/student and celebrity/audience - in the Internet culture which might undermine them.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">This is certainly a very probing analysis. I see McLuhan and Ivan Illich hovering in the background here. The xMOOC medium is the message. &nbsp;And the message is that opportunities for learning are scarce.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">I would wish to soften this analysis somewhat. While we can all agree with Stephen Downes that knowledge is distributed and that networks - not their nodes - are the real sites of learning, and then accept that 'experts' and 'celebrities' cut themselves off from the flow of information and cutting edge insights, knowledge is nonetheless never distributed equally. There are people who have spent years on various topics and who are more discerning than most. While like Sutter or Shatner they can engage one-on-one with some of the ‘low rank’ people they cannot be expected to engage with very many of them, simply because of the limits that come with any form of celebrity&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">(where celebrity by definition means having more people being attentive to you than you can attend to)&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">– even the relative celebrity of the leaders and major participants in the Twitterverse and cMOOCs.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">So there is an overdrawn &nbsp;‘opposition’ in this account of oppositions in the MOOC space, the untenable opposition between spaces with oppositions and spaces without them. And far from necessarily re-imposing &nbsp;the polar oppositions of the past, xMOOCs can be valuable tools for self-directed learning and not merely re-habituation into institutionalized, hierarchical forms of 'education. &nbsp;</span><br /><br />Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-11711479579786487552013-10-28T15:37:00.001-07:002013-10-28T15:42:01.778-07:00Free University Credits Given Away in MOOCville <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WXGFMvEIzA/Um7m4MVe8cI/AAAAAAAAASo/b7INyPAAVsM/s1600/Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WXGFMvEIzA/Um7m4MVe8cI/AAAAAAAAASo/b7INyPAAVsM/s200/Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG" width="200" /></a>Well, hello there. Good to see you again!<br /><br />I've been away from MOOCville for a month, and you all know the old saying, "When the CAT is away the MOOCs will play." (Not sure what CAT stands for - maybe 'cagey ancient teacher' or 'covert anti-technocrat'??') So let's catch up. Today I'll focus on <i>MOOCs for Credit.</i><br /><br /><br /><b><i><br /></i></b><b><i>More colleges are offering actual bankable credits for MOOCs.</i></b> <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-md-mooc-20130815,0,979415,full.story">&nbsp;The Baltimore Sun reports that the University of Maryland's University College will accept some MOOCs for college credit. </a>This move is part of a broader study, funded by the Gates Foundation, to discover how students using MOOCs instead of conventional courses will do in further education.The courses will include those already approved by the American Council on Education (ACE) as equivalent to college courses. The students will earn their credits in two ways: (i) by earning verified certificates by taking proctored exams (trhe Coursera Signature Level concept), or (ii) by undergoing 'rigorous prior learning assessment' - essentially testing out - at the UMUC campus. &nbsp;ACE is, not surprisingly, a partner in the study. UMUC has been offering college credits for life experience for forty years and this is a very natural - one might say inevitable - extension of that effort.<br /><br />UMUC has been a leader in offering programs for adult and 'non-traditional students. If they can offer credit for diverse work experiences of undocumented relevance for academic growth, why not for actual courses certified by the appropriate body as equivalent to college courses. And if UMUC makes this move, what is to stop other colleges and universities from following? In fact, the acceptance of MOOCs for credit is certain to become a marketing move that other providers will find it difficult to resist. Students will demand to know why schools they are considering refuse to accept these courses, and instead force them to pay ever-increasing tuition fees for the same courses. And they won't belly up if they find good alternatives.<br /><br /><i>The take-away: the "MOOCs for Credit" trend is unstoppable.</i> <br /><br /><b><i>MOOC-based credits as a marketing ploy. </i></b><a href="http://www.uc.edu/distance/innovation.html">The University of Cincinnati has announced that it is offering 2 free credits for students participating in its MOOC</a>, "Innovation and Design Thinking," - for students who gain the certificate of learning and then apply and are admitted to the University's Lindner College of Business. This goes one step further than a development announced by Temple University in Philadelphia (truth in advertising - Temple is my home base) last month to permit students taking its introductory level business MOOCs to test out of the parallel courses and qualify for more advanced standing. In the Temple move, the students do not save anything on their tuition payments but get to graduate with more advanced level courses for the same price. On the Cincinnati gambit the students instead get bankable credits and can thus graduate earlier and at less cost. It will be interesting to see which of these models (or both, or neither) catches on.<br /><br /><i>Takeaway: Universities will continue to invent and experiment with various alternatives in using MOOCs to make their programs appealing to cost-conscious students. &nbsp;&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><br />Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-35771810383420210162013-09-20T11:12:00.000-07:002013-09-20T11:13:40.399-07:00EdX and the Convergence of MOOC Learning Management Systems (LMS). <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZtITLF_KgBs/UjyN-HjZaLI/AAAAAAAAASE/sB8yrSpPpP8/s1600/edx-300x225+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZtITLF_KgBs/UjyN-HjZaLI/AAAAAAAAASE/sB8yrSpPpP8/s200/edx-300x225+image.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past week has witnessed an important development in the convergence of open course management systems for MOOCs.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">In September 2012 <a href="http://getideas.org/news/stanford-releases-new-open-source-online-education-platform/">Stanford released Course2GO </a>- built on top of Stanford Courseware &nbsp;- as open source software. &nbsp;</span><br /><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jane Manning, Class2Go product manager, explained that the idea started with a six-member&nbsp;team in Stanford’s computer-science department. The team&nbsp;built Class2Go using code from Stanford’s Courseware course-hosting platform, a similar platform from the nonprofit Khan Academy, and software for integrated online classroom forums hosted by Piazza</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">At the same time, <a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/09/helping-world-to-teach.html">Google released its open source CourseBuilder system</a>.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Google explained that&nbsp;</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Course Builder open source project is an experimental early step for us in the world of online education. It is a snapshot of an approach we found useful and an indication of our future direction. . . . </span><a href="https://www.edx.org/" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.3s; background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 19px; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.3s;"><span style="color: black;">edX</span></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;shares in the open source vision for online learning platforms, and Google and the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.edx.org/" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.3s; background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 19px; outline: none; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.3s;"><span style="color: black;">edX</span></a></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;team are in discussions about open standards and technology sharing for course platforms.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">&nbsp;</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">In June 2013 <a href="https://www.edx.org/alert/edx-builds-community-developers/944">edX released its own open source MOOC management system.</a> &nbsp;</span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At about the same time, <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22942985/stanford-teaming-edx-an-open-source-online-education">Stanford announced that it would be closing Course2GO and partnering with edX</a> for further development of open source MOOC management tools.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to Stanford's announcement, open source online learning platforms such as edX will allow universities to develop their own delivery methods, partner with other universities and institutions as they choose, collect data and control branding of their educational material.<br />While Stanford and its professors will continue to use several providers of online courses, including Coursera and Venture Lab, the university will stop developing its own platform, Class2Go.&nbsp;Instead, aspects of Class2Go will be incorporated into the program developed at edX, a nonprofit launched by Harvard and MIT last year. The resulting software code will become available, or open source, on June 1.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 22.640625px;">In Stanford's news release, edX president&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 22.640625px;">Anant Agarwal predicted that the edX platform w</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 22.640625px;">ill now become the "Linux of learning." </span><span style="line-height: 18px;">&nbsp;</span></span><br /><div></div><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Now edX has partnered with Google to form MOOC.org, a platform to enable all schools, organizations or individuals to author and manage their own MOOCs.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3a3a3a; font-family: Heuristica, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.796875px;">As <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/google-and-edx-create-a-mooc-site-for-the-rest-of-us/46413">Steve Kolowich reports in the Chronicle</a>,&nbsp;</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #3a3a3a; font-family: Heuristica, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.796875px;">The new site, MOOC.org, will provide tools and a platform that “will allow any academic institution, business, and individual to create and host online courses,” says a blog post by Dan Clancy, a research director at Google. In an interview, Anant Agarwal, president of edX, referred to the site as a “YouTube for courses.”&nbsp;</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">The resulting open source system will by 2014 enable anyone, anywhere, to develop MOOCs free from dependence upon commercial learning management systems like Blackboard. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>EdX won't be all things for all people, but it promises to be both the Linux and the YouTube for massive online courses.<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-66756867749481643842013-09-18T11:12:00.000-07:002013-09-18T16:03:00.066-07:00Foundation Course Sequences - a new paradigm for MOOCville?<a href="http://moocville.blogspot.com/2013/09/mooc-certificates-and-diploma-programs.html">In my last post</a> I noted that the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school is offering its first year courses, bundled into a package, on the Coursera platform. &nbsp;This significant event suggests a new development in the MOOC space.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_9ZsdSxre_o/UjnsJOC_AmI/AAAAAAAAAR0/BAUn4dSTrHQ/s1600/edx-300x225+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_9ZsdSxre_o/UjnsJOC_AmI/AAAAAAAAAR0/BAUn4dSTrHQ/s200/edx-300x225+image.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://mfeldstein.com/two-mooc-curriculum-announcements-in-one-week/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mfeldstein%2Ffeed+%28e-Literate%29" style="font-family: inherit;">Phil Hill over at e-Literate </a><span style="font-family: inherit;">notes today that MIT has joined Wharton in offering not just individual courses, but organized sequences of foundation courses in the MOOC format.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The upshot is that learners can now gain access to organized courses of study, with certificates of completion, for free. Keep an eye on this development! &nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 24px;">MIT will offer the first of seven courses in its Foundations of Computer Science XSeries this fall on the edX platform.. Then one or more additional courses will be offered each semester. The entire sequence will be available by fall 2015. The three course sequence in Supply Chain Management will begin in the fall of 2014.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">For those concerned about security, MIT plans to implement an&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">identity verification process starting in Spring 2014 that will prompt students to present government-issued identification before standing for exams.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">The concern with security - especially for course sequences - suggests that MOOC leaders anticipate the use of MOOC certificates in consequential decisions such as those by colleges accepting MOOCs for advanced standing, grad school admission committees, and employers. &nbsp;</span></span>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-8608496640620982042013-09-17T10:11:00.002-07:002013-09-18T15:59:29.272-07:00MOOC Certificates and Diploma ProgramsThe University of Pennsylvania's Wharton College of Business has just announced that they will put their <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wharton-puts-first-mba-courses-164555193.html">entire first year course program </a>on line for free, on the Coursera MOOC platform.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vh_8pA4sqq0/UjiNFsvYs5I/AAAAAAAAARk/EfXAiUKCsl4/s1600/group+of+people-1279618-m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vh_8pA4sqq0/UjiNFsvYs5I/AAAAAAAAARk/EfXAiUKCsl4/s1600/group+of+people-1279618-m.jpg" /></a>This is another breakthrough in MOOCville; for the first time a university is bundling all of the courses in an entire year of its diploma program in MOOCs. Students from all over the world can now take the entire first year Wharton MBA program, from the same professors delivering the courses on campus, for free. And those completing the courses will earn certificates of learning.<br /><br />This in one more step in the process whereby MOOC certificates will eventually be aggregated, by universities or third party aggregators, and recognized as diploma equivalents.<br /><br />Let us consider this case: a recent graduate of a major engineering college - say Stanford, Purdue or Georgia Tech - applies for an entry level management job at a high-tech firm. An individual MOOC certificate may not help very much, but a bundled set of Wharton MBA MOOCs tells quite a different story - that this graduate has the background knowledge, motivation and self-management skills to acquire the MBA knowledge base on his (or her) own. <br /><br />The college or grad school diploma has been used as a job filter because it lowers transaction costs for employers. But as more and more people pass through the filter, the filter has become inefficient - it lets in too many people without strong capabilities. The diploma doesn't sufficiently differentiate its holders from others. And especially now that product cycles are rapid and skills erode quickly, employers are inevitably more interested in specific capabilities than the general knowledge represented by diplomas.<br /><br />A single MOOC might not be useful as a job filter - after all, what, exactly, does it represent? But a bundled package of certificates from a leading university, representing a full complement of cutting edge knowledge and skill, would be a more efficient filter than a mere diploma. <br /><br />In my view this progression from individual MOOCs to packages of certificates accepted as diploma equivalents in the hiring process is inevitable. It is a win-win-lose proposition. The firms will win, the students will win - only the Higher Ed sector currently monopolizing job access will lose. <br /><br />We will not have to wait very long for this process to come to completion: leading high tech <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/12/free-massive-online-education-provider-coursera-begins-to-find-a-path-to-profits/">firms have recently formed an alliance to explore weighting packages of MOOC certificates as diploma equivalents </a>in their hiring practices. Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-52321336164338663882013-08-28T10:31:00.000-07:002013-08-28T11:03:16.088-07:00MOOCs and the Two Cultures of Educational Reform<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--nryr5bVzT4/Uh47HHNHYqI/AAAAAAAAARU/sTrcfqmrRDM/s1600/photo_21467_20120211.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--nryr5bVzT4/Uh47HHNHYqI/AAAAAAAAARU/sTrcfqmrRDM/s200/photo_21467_20120211.jpg" width="200" /></a>Stanley Fish writes in the New York Times of the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/the-two-cultures-of-educational-reform/?_r=0#h[]">"Two Cultures of Educational Reform."</a> Citing Derek Bok,<br /> former Harvard president, Fish identifies these as follows:&nbsp;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">The first “is an evidence-based approach to education … rooted in the belief that one can best advance teaching and learning by measuring student progress and testing experimental efforts to increase it.” The second “rests on a conviction that effective teaching is an art which one can improve over time through personal experience and intuition without any need for data-driven reforms imposed from above.”</span></blockquote>Fish correctly notes that in the current conversation about educational reform the quantitative side of this debate is winning. And he associates the emergence of MOOCs with this trend. Certainly the pronouncements of edX's Agarwal and Udacity's Thrun support this association - they claim - with unmeasured arrogance - to be searching for - and even finding - the "magic formula" for education. Fish replies that no one really knows how to measure the educational values inherent in higher education - and thus that the quantitative side of this divide rests for now entirely on empty promises.<br /><br />Fish closes with this meditation:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span class="emhighlight"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, argues . . . that with the help of the digital media, “we can release ourselves from the shackles that we have gotten used to in the context of in-class teaching.” This turns out to mean that we can be released from the distracting bother of interacting with actual people.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">&nbsp;</span></span></span></blockquote>What does all of this have to do with MOOCs?<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Not very much. The allure of MOOCs does not derive from their demonstrably superior pedagogies - and their problems don't stem from their demonstrable pedagogical limits. Thus all of the discussion of what is gained and lost by learning from MOOCs as opposed to live teachers in largely irrelevant.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The problem that has brought MOOCs to the forefront is two-fold: (1) the use of the college degree as a job filter regardless of the actual knowledge and skill requirements of the job, and (2) college tuition outstripping middle class ability to pay.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The ultimate promise of MOOCs is a free equivalent to a college diploma. This will not require high quality education. And significantly, it will not even require credits and degrees for MOOCs. It requires no more than employers accepting aggregations of MOOC certificates - among other achievements - &nbsp;in lieu of the diploma.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The reason the diploma has been used as a filter is that it is a very cheap way for employers to reduce their transaction costs (search and assessment) in hiring. As we move in the direction of universal higher education the diploma is failing as a filter. As a simple matter of logic, as more students graduate from college the diploma becomes less differentiating. Employers will need new, more discriminating filters. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This brings us to the current situation. The new global network occupational system is gravitating from full time jobs with benefits to contingent work for even professional knowledge workers. These "free lance nation" types can get in there, do the job efficiently, and leave - without encumbering employers with benefit packages. Thus employers are more focused on finding specific capabilities than the general levels of knowledge associated with diplomas.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And with new search capabilities, they can find what they are looking for. Meanwhile, job candidates can develop searchable digital portfolios, demonstrate their capabilities, and be found through online search. MOOC certificates will fine tune their educational credentials for employers, and thus reduce employer transaction costs more than diplomas. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">These are the emerging dynamics of the market for post-secondary education. The other strands in the MOOC conversation, about "poetry," "teaching as an art," "magic formulas," "measurable learning objectives" and Daphne Koller's Brave New World, are side shows.&nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-722540874088607302013-08-23T15:41:00.002-07:002013-08-23T15:45:23.027-07:00The Feminist Anti-MOOC - Something New in MOOCville? <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eRHjaYzH6pA/Uhfkq6a6-0I/AAAAAAAAARE/SLlpuyV6mCc/s1600/connections.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eRHjaYzH6pA/Uhfkq6a6-0I/AAAAAAAAARE/SLlpuyV6mCc/s200/connections.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/feminist-professors-create-alternative-moocs">Scott Jaschik in Inside Education</a>, in "A Feminist Anti-MOOC,"&nbsp;reports on a new MOOC-like course, <i>Feminism and Technology, </i>developed by a consortium of professors at 17 colleges and co-led by&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white;">Anne Balsamo, dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Unlike the now-standard x-MOOC, the course will feature a distributed model based on 'feminist pedagogical principles.' It will be labeled a DOCC - a distributed open collaborative course. The DOCC will be available for credit at each of the 17 schools and&nbsp;&nbsp;anyone with Internet access can watch the videos and access the materials.&nbsp;</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The DOCC explicitly challenges the top-down, hierarchical, patriarchal model of xMOOCs. Facilitators assume that every participant brings expertise and unique capabilities, which can then be used collaboratively to study the place of women in technology - no more sage on the (virtual) stage.</span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The backbone of the course will consist of a series of videos - lectures and interviews created by participating faculty. But faculty in each college will build their own courses, and set their own grading standards, in accord with their own institutional expectations. Each of the 17 sites will involve between 15-30&nbsp;for-credit students. Thus the total number of full participants will be limited to around 500 - the course is explicitly non-massive. &nbsp;</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Collaboration will be key to course learning - students will exchange their ideas and expertise and collaborate on the course project, 'Storming Wikipedia,' in which all students will research women in technology and then create or edit wikipedia articles on these women. The end result will thus be a rich, easily accessible information resource on the course topic.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This looks to be an attractive template for collaborative teaching and learning using the Internet. Especially interesting is use of what amounts to an 'invisible college' in the field of technology studies as a collaborative teaching faculty. Here are a few comments and questions for further discussion:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Full participation will require enrollment in the for-credit DOCC. The facilitators claim to be challenging the role of money in the development of the highly publicised MOOCs like Coursera, but this DOCC, like typical college courses, shifts the expenses primarily to tuition paying students. thus it doesn't address the pressing money challenge in the MOOC space - how to make quality higher education accessible for those now priced out. How can DOCCs help address this problem?&nbsp;</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">2. The leaders of this DOCC claim that the distributive model differentiates it from xMOOCs. It doesn't. Cathy Davidson of Duke, as I noted in a <a href="http://moocville.blogspot.com/2013/08/cathy-davidson-of-duke-on-opportunities.html">MOOCville post a few weeks back,</a> uses distributive learning principles in her Coursera course - her use of her massive learner base to create a highly-detailed database for the history of higher education throughout the world is very similar to the 'Storming Wikipedia' project. A course from the Darden Business school at Virginia that <a href="http://moocville.blogspot.com/2013/07/combining-x-moocs-and-connectivism.html">I described recently </a>also uses connectivist principles within the xMOOC framework.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As Stephen Downes noted in a comment to the IHE article, 'DOCC' &nbsp;is just another term for cMOOC - the original MOOC framework that he and others developed in Canada some years ago:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;"&nbsp;<span style="color: #42474a; line-height: 21px;">This is a cMOOC. This is exactly what Siemens and I built, and have written about for years."&nbsp;</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So while this course is a welcome development, it is really not much of an innovation; its just another variant of a familiar MOOC design. One question is whether&nbsp;smaller, more circumscribed DOCC participant groups can add something special to online distributive learning?&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">3. The distributive learning model, while quite central to feminist pedagogy, pre-dates it by many decades. It lies at the heart of John Dewey's Democracy and Education, where the interactions of individuals from distinct ethnic and religious communities in dealing with selected common subject materials ARE the curriculum. So a question is whether laying claim to distributive learning as a 'feminist' alternative to patriarchy advances either the understanding or uptake of distributive pedagogical principles?.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">4. &nbsp;What lessons can we learn from this DOCC?&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A faculty of explicitly feminist teachers, engaging feminist students in a course on feminism, is likely to generate sustained&nbsp;conversation and collaboration, because the free-wheeling exploration will be bounded by shared understandings and constraints.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But many students in mass online higher education do not engage in course discussions or chat at all; discussion boards frequently degenerate into bitching sessions and flame wars. Creating such a communicative environment in more typical college environments may prove difficult, without shared learning aims or pedagogical principles. Do the DOCC leaders plan to extend this experiment beyond their own favorable settings? &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-77331111988225624812013-08-22T14:32:00.002-07:002013-08-22T15:45:42.179-07:00A Serpentine Procession in MOOCville? <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iv8rIVwxd2g/UhaC6UDFsOI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/fLXvsUWO6ik/s1600/norwegian-viperadder-1349081-s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iv8rIVwxd2g/UhaC6UDFsOI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/fLXvsUWO6ik/s320/norwegian-viperadder-1349081-s.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Riesman, in&nbsp;<cite style="background-color: white; color: #403e38; line-height: 18px;">Constraint and Variety in Higher Education</cite><span style="background-color: white; color: #403e38; line-height: 18px;">&nbsp;(1956), </span>once described the development of American Higher Education as a "serpentine procession" with Harvard at the head and all other colleges crawling behind Harvard's lead.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So it goes with MOOCs. The Harvard MIT EdX partnership - along&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">with Coursera, out of Stanford and partnered with Princeton and other elite universities - </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">created the first wave of excitement. Now a host of other MOOC platforms are following in the procession - and a multitude of colleges at all levels are crawling into MOOCville. &nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The newcomers will not be able to compete on reputation. And given that MOOCs are free and open, no one will be able to compete on price. As a result, the newcomers will have to find specific niches to gain attention. &nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here is a useful example. <a href="http://www.ecotechinstitute.com/ecotech-news/ecotech-institutes-first-free-online-course-receives-positive-student-feedback.cfm">The Eco-Tech Institute of Aurora Colorado</a> brands itself as the first and only college in the country entirely devoted to preparing graduates for careers in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The institute offers associates degrees in &nbsp;such fields as solar technology, wind technology, green facilities management, and business administration/sustainability.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This two-year school has just completed its first MOOC- on Sustainability - offered on Instructure's <a href="https://www.canvas.net/learn-more">Canvas Network platform</a>. &nbsp; The course aims to develop critical thinking about environmental sustainability at all levels from the corporate and governmental to the personal.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 1px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From an article in </span><a href="http://groundreport.com/ecotech-institutes-first-free-online-course-introduction-to-sustainability-receives-positive-student-feedback/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Ground Report</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 1px;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Students came from “all walks of life and from around the globe,” according to Kyle Crider, Ecotech Institute’s Program Chair and Manager of Environmental Operations, who led the course. There was a diverse mix of men and women in the class, ranging in educational background from high school to Ph.D., about half of whom had never taken an online course before.&nbsp;Many participants were so engaged that they actually requested that the class continue beyond the ten weeks.” &nbsp;</span></blockquote></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 1px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 1px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a good example of a niche school using a MOOC as a tool to spread awareness and brand itself as niche leader. The well-publicized MOOC is an attempt to capture the attention of Ph.D. scientists, industry leaders, and concerned publics. It will be interesting to see whether this marketing through MOOCs increases Eco-Tech's global recognition, student enrollment, and its own institutional sustainability.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-3695137676441671102013-08-21T17:06:00.001-07:002013-08-22T15:46:49.190-07:00Can it Be Real -- A Free All-MOOC University Offering Credits and Degrees?<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MjOeg8lfnDo/UhVT64VHDNI/AAAAAAAAAQk/u62ngzS1LJA/s1600/free.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MjOeg8lfnDo/UhVT64VHDNI/AAAAAAAAAQk/u62ngzS1LJA/s200/free.jpg" width="180" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The <a href="http://newindianexpress.com/education/edex/A-MOOC-player-that-offers-degrees/2013/08/19/article1737099.ece">New Indian Express reports </a>on World Education University (WEU) a non-profit that opened earlier this year and promises to offer free MOOC-based degree programs in many fields. The university was&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;">incorporated in March 2012 and a</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ccording to Curtis Pickering, the founder and CEO of WEU,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.3em;">students will be able to &nbsp;enroll for both for-credit and non-credit courses, undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificate programs. Schools will include Colleges of Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Engineering and Computer Sciences, Health Sciences, Hospitality, Tourism and Retail Management, Legal Studies and Psychology.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;">One unique feature of WEU, Pickering states, will be a social justice theme running across all courses and degree programs. Pickering added that "</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.71875px;">WEU will revolutionize education by changing the financial structure of the industry. Free education will be made available to anyone, at any time, and any place."</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;">&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.3em;">The non-profit firm seeks to raise revenue&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.796875px;">through ads, and by selling student information to its sponsors. It plans to lease courses from an accredited university, but so far has not released any further information about either its courses or the university behind them.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.796875px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.796875px;">Steve Kolowich, reporting in <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/17/world-education-university-looks-ride-mooc-wave-despite-skeptics">Inside Higher Education</a>, notes that WEU has alarmed both high-tech and traditional educators. Ellen Wagner of &nbsp;the Cooperative for Educational Technologies -&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white;">a non-profit that &nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white;">promotes the effective use of technology in education,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.796875px;">says&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">“I don't know that I would call it ‘snake oil’ exactly, b</span><span style="background-color: white;">ut it is certainly naïve . . . And opportunistic.”</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Meanwhile, WEU will have to jump the accreditation hurdle or it's courses and degrees won't be recognized in the current system. &nbsp;O</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">nly when accredited can they call themselves a "university," according to Alan Contreras, a former watchdog for Oregon’s Office of Degree Authorization. Until then, says Contreras, WEU is merely the sum of its marketing rhetoric. “If they are not issuing degrees or academic credits, they are not a degree mill.” At the same time, “they are not a university, either . . . They are a sack of vapor until they get authorized,” Contreras stated in an email to Kolowich.&nbsp;</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Meanwhile, WEU continues to 'enroll' students - 50,000 have signed on so far - and gather their data, presumably for re-sale.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are two questions that must be considered in evaluating WEU's chances for success.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first is whether they can get accredited?&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Skeptics may declare that WEU is a fraud that will disappear without a trace. I am not so sure. John Sperling faced both skepticism and endless setbacks in his effort to get his degree programs for working professionals established at traditional universities - because the accrediting agencies threatened to withdraw accreditation - and then at the University of Phoenix. But eventually The University of Phoenix gained accreditation and for-profit convenience universities immediately had a profound effect - for better or worse - on higher education. For now I share the skeptics uneasiness, but i wouldn't be too quick to count Pickering out of the accreditation process even before he gets started.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The deeper question is whether Contreras is correct to think that the current accreditation system is the only game in town. &nbsp;I think not. With firms seeking highly specific capabilities to meet well-defined short term needs, and able to locate these through online search at low cost, the university degree no longer has a monopoly as job filter. Learners can build digital portfolio resumes, complete with MOOC certificates and videos demonstrating capabilities, and compete against those able to demonstrate only a standard, general level of knowledge through a diploma. Meanwhile, those learners uneasy about the lack of a university degree on their resumes, may be enabled to fill in that 'line' with a 'degree' from an unaccredited university and pass through the personnel department's filter. &nbsp;</span></div></div>Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-6306235832048747652013-08-10T16:02:00.001-07:002013-08-22T15:48:21.429-07:00Cathy Davidson of Duke on Opportunities for Creative and Collaborative research within the xMOOC context <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dDLRWlYSSRM/UgbGWKcr_xI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/nPobafOjX-0/s1600/Cathy+Davidson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="119" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dDLRWlYSSRM/UgbGWKcr_xI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/nPobafOjX-0/s200/Cathy+Davidson.jpg" width="200" /></a>Cathy Davidson from Duke notes<a href="http://degreeoffreedom.org/interview-with-cathy-davidson/"> in this podcast</a>&nbsp;interview from <a href="http://degreeoffreedom.org/">degree of freedom</a> that teaching and learning in the xMOOC space have so far been governed by hierarchy - famous professors from elite universities handing down culture to the great unwashed masses. This has been a deplorable backwards step. She adds that the one great allure of lectures by great thinkers is being in a room with a lot of people who are simultaneously being inspired. xMOOCs don't even have that.<br /><br />But she contends that even the xMOOC medium can be used in creative and collaborative ways. In early 2014 she will be teaching a MOOC on the Coursera platform 'the history and future of higher education'. Because she will have many thousands of students signed up, the group will be able to create a rich, multi-media timeline of higher education since 1800. Each student will contribute notes on several significant higher education events at their specific locations - countries, states, municipalities - and the group will collaborate on editing and coordinating the information and producing the final online <br />product. <br /><br />These are among the many insights in this useful podcast interview.Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-61578995684865365442013-08-09T11:58:00.000-07:002013-08-22T15:50:37.459-07:00If MOOCs Are (or Are Not) the Solution, What Is The Problem?<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T1ydd4IP_wE/UgVL_S0ZGYI/AAAAAAAAAQA/KYPmUh6Ot1M/s1600/math+problem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T1ydd4IP_wE/UgVL_S0ZGYI/AAAAAAAAAQA/KYPmUh6Ot1M/s200/math+problem.jpg" width="200" /></a>Steve Kolowich writes in yesterday's <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/MOOCs-May-Not-Be-So-Disruptive/140965/">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> that MOOCs may not be the disruptive technology they are being hyped to be. He notes that many recent attempts to translate MOOC certificates into college credits have crashed.<br /><br />California bill SB 520, introduced in May, which would have required public universities in the state to grant credits for designated MOOCs, was first de-fanged - a successful amendment restored to the universities to power to accept or reject the MOOC certificates as they chose - and then withdrawn. Its sponsor, state senate leader Darrell Steinberg, gave in when the universities agreed to expand their on-line offerings.<br /><br />Kolowich offers several similar examples, and concludes that political, regulatory, administrative and faculty barriers to credit for MOOCs have proven to be quite high. Nonetheless, Russell Poulin of The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperation in Educational Technology states that "Credits are the coin of the academic realm, and if that's where the coins are, these companies (the MOOC platforms) are going to drive there." Kolowich concludes that "given the institutional monopoly on credit granting privileges" MOOCs will be "catering to colleges rather than attempting to undermine them."<br /><br />Sebastian Thrun of Udacity seems to agree with this assessment. He has actively been forging partnerships with universities to generate credits for Udacity's MOOCs, saying that a learning medium where only web-savvy, highly motivated people sign up and only 10% succeed "doesn't strike me quite yet a solution to the problems of higher education."<br /><br />This raises an interesting question: If MOOCs are (or are not) the solution, just what <i>IS</i> the problem?<br /><br />We might define the problem in terms of the need for affordable yet effective universal higher education. If that is the problem, the recent crash of the San Jose State University use of MOOCs to teach remedial math could be seen as a serious setback. (For those not familiar with this episode, SJSU partnered with Udacity, with Gates Foundation funding, to pilot a MOOC for developmental courses. In a follow up study it was revealed that 74% of the students in the face to face group passed, compared to only 51% in the MOOC. In the aftermath, SJSU put its MOOC efforts on hold.) Of course, it might also be argued that the results from this pilot effort cannot be generalized. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-udacity-online-education-20130723,0,3407868.story">The LA Times editorialized </a>that the project was "practically a model of how to do online education badly . . .rushed into existence and sloppily overseen". But let us grant that if we are trying to educate the least prepared college students well at low cost, MOOCs are not the solution. &nbsp; <br /><br />But maybe that's not the real problem. Think of it this way. When only 20% of American 18 year olds possessed a high school diploma, the diploma meant something. It differentiated its holders from 80% of the population, and could be used as a job filter to reduce transaction (search and selection) costs for firms with jobs to offer. Today 77% of the age cohort receives a diploma. At that rate, the diploma can hardly serve as a proxy for high levels of knowledge or skill - even the GED is more demanding. And more to the point, it doesn't differentiate diploma holders from anyone who would compete for a job. As the rate of graduation increased, the socio-economic advantages of the high school diploma decreased. Today a person with high school but no further education is little better off than the high school drop out, and the differential continues to shrink every year.<br /><br />&nbsp;As a result of the high school diploma's failure as a filter, employers turned to the college diploma as a job filter. But as more and more people gain college diplomas, they too differentiate less and less. As a result the college diploma also becomes less and less valuable as a job filter - it no longer can be used to decrease transaction costs. Adding to the proportion of diploma holders by providing access to the least prepared students will only make the problem worse - like the high school diploma, the college diploma will lose all differentiating value. Employers are already in need of new, more effective filters than college diplomas.<br /><br />And this is where MOOC certificates enter the picture. In the age of the Internet, individuals can make themselves visible on line through websites and blogs and videos and comprehensive digital portfolios, and employers can use search capabilities to locate them. And in today's rapidly changing economy, employers are more interested in specific and demonstrable capabilities than markers of a standardized level of knowledge such as college degrees.<br /><br />So maybe Thrun is simply wrong. Maybe a &nbsp;learning medium where only web-savvy, highly motivated people sign up and only 10% succeed is the precise solution to the problem of higher education. It provides the next job filter for the highly competitive global economy, an economy no longer capable of providing jobs for all college grads that seek them.<br /><br />This transition from diploma-based to capabilities-based filters will take some time. But MOOC certificates, as elements of digital portfolios, will play an important role in the process - connecting those with highly specific knowledge and skill demonstrated through certificates to employers with matching needs. To track this transition, keep your eye on Coursera's expansion into the employment agency business.<br /><br /><br /><br />Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-22243466592482564102013-07-17T11:00:00.000-07:002013-07-17T11:26:28.779-07:00Combining x-MOOCs and Connectivism <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wMNWBkImPtw/UebhsjvYSSI/AAAAAAAAAPw/PVbFenrFQL8/s1600/tree+connections.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wMNWBkImPtw/UebhsjvYSSI/AAAAAAAAAPw/PVbFenrFQL8/s200/tree+connections.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Over at the Harvard Business Review's blog network, a recent article<a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/a_new_use_for_moocs_real-world.html"> "A New Use for MOOCs - Real World Problem Solving"</a>&nbsp; by&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white; color: #585556; line-height: 22px;">Zafrin Nurmohamed, Nabeel Gillani, and Michael Lenox</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #585556; font-size: 12px; line-height: 22px;">&nbsp;</span>describes the course Foundations of Business Strategy offered on the Coursera platform from the Darden Biz School at the University of Virginia. The course combines lessons in business strategy with real-world problem solving.&nbsp;</span><br /><br />Using an application called <i>Coursolve</i>, the professors connected course students with small and large business organizations. The final project required students to work with their business partners to solve real world problems. 72 % of the businesses involved students in their currently most pressing and challenging problems.<br /><br />The take-away from this example is that x-MOOCs, frequently critiqued for relying exclusively on the outdated broadcast model of instruction, can selectively use at least some elements of connectivist learning. The connections are not merely one-to-one connections between students and their business organizations. The MOOC itself, through <i>Coursolve</i>, locates business partners through something like a crowdsourcing app. Meanwhile, in their final reports the students will inevitably make use not merely of course materials but the universe of knowledge and expertise on the web.<br /><br />One concern with this arrangement is that the businesses are making free use of student labor. However, unlike the predatory internships that have recently been uncovered, the project work in this course is a genuine learning experience in a quasi-academic setting.Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2479342201861149530.post-49398959669270333492013-07-16T16:06:00.000-07:002013-07-17T11:10:43.401-07:00MOOC Mania<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_fc-sxGrpkM/UeXQvsyqYLI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/3jR1pCr4q9U/s1600/Angry-Crowd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_fc-sxGrpkM/UeXQvsyqYLI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/3jR1pCr4q9U/s320/Angry-Crowd.jpg" width="320" /></a>William Hammond at <a href="http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3727/mooc-mania-when-technology-and-higher-education-collide">Public Service Europe</a> offers some reflections on MOOCs that are worth pondering. Here are his main points (in italics) followed by my comments:<br /><i><br /></i><i>1. MOOC platforms have now grown sufficiently in size and influence to have caught the attention of policy makers.&nbsp;</i><br /><br />This trend indicates that we may start to see some regulation or standardization of the use of MOOC certificates. Policy makers and administrative leaders hate uncertainty. They already feel the need to end MOOC mania. We may already be seeing the beginning of the end of wild experimentation and wild speculation about the place of MOOCs in the higher education landscape.<br /><br /><i>2. MOOCS are regressing to older and arguably outmoded structural designs. The first MOOCs were guided by connectivist and constructivist principles; experienced scholars provided overall structures but much of the course content was then generated by the learners themselves, using sophisticated digital tools and web 2.0 software applications. These so-called "c-MOOCs" were organized learning communities. But the new MOOCs that have gained so much attention have reverted to the broadcast model using materials - lectures, videos, texts - from existing courses to achieve pre-determined learning goals. </i><br /><br />Despite the presumed values and habits and networking capabilities of the so-called net generation, these new so-called "x-MOOCs" still look like "real" courses from "real" colleges. The take-away is that the big MOOC platforms like edX and Coursera, despite their professed interest in improving educational methods, may actually be setting back the shift to an open connectivist and constructivist teaching-learning paradigm.<br /><i><br /></i><i>3. Many participants in large platform MOOCs are highly educated people including those possessing advanced degrees. The popularity of MOOCs may reflect the growing demand for low-cost/no-cost cutting edge learning in today's knowledge economies.&nbsp;</i><br /><br />This demographic fact may reflect an important shift from front-loaded higher education for standard professional 'qualification' &nbsp;to on-going or life-long education for ever-shifting narrowly defined occupational niche identities.<br /><i><br /></i><i>4. Employers may now be starting to pay attention to MOOCs as qualifications.&nbsp;</i><br /><br />Employers<i>&nbsp;</i>may now find that a package of MOOCs in cutting edge areas of knowledge and skill tells them more about whether a job applicant can perform a narrowly defined work task than a diploma. &nbsp;Diplomas represent a standard level of general professional knowledge but say nothing about specific cutting edge capabilities.<br /><i><br /></i><i>5. Prospects for the long term impact of MOOCs depend on whether universities will accept MOOC certificates for credit and thus reduce the overall cost of earning a degree.&nbsp;</i><br /><br />Here I must respectfully disagree. Regardless of how universities adjust, it is inevitable that organizations will emerge to aggregate MOOCs into packages that can stand as diploma equivalents or have some comparable meaning to employers. ACE, an organization that certifies courses as credit-worthy, has already certified several MOOCs as worthy of college credit, so the main problem will not be MOOC quality. MOOCs will be sustainable to the extent that employers recognize them as qualifications, and they will do so to the extent that using MOOCs as filters lowers their transaction (search, assessment and training) costs. College diplomas served this function in the age of slowly changing professional knowledge workers. MOOCs may play a similar or parallel role in the age of rapidly shifting tasks requiring rapidly up-graded capabilities. <br /><br />How do you see these trends? Please add your comments below.Leonard Wakshttps://plus.google.com/109640335668754791023noreply@blogger.com0